In my opinion the Christian persecution complex is just an emotional game that Christians (and those of other religions) play when they are backed into a corner and cannot answer questions asked of them. When their god does not come to their aid, when their minds go blank, they turn on the boo-hooing tactics to distract from the real fact that they just don’t have any answers to back up what they are professing to believe in. The persecution tactic is turned on when religious folks cannot get their way concerning issues of separation of church and state. They turn on the tears when they are not allowed to impose their personal religious beliefs on others.

Here is a good essay written by Rob Boston

Persecution Complex: Why Religious Right Claims Of Hostility Toward Christians Ring Hollow

Yesterday I received an e-mail from the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association advertising a new DVD titled “Speechless: Silencing the Christians.”

“Facing rising persecution and discrimination, many Christians feel hopeless, uncertain what to do,” reads the promotional copy. The e-mail promises that I will learn “how you can be prepared if you feel the pressure to be silenced for your faith.”

This is the sort of bullcrap propaganda that religious leaders brainwash their sheeple with. When backed into a corner, and have no answers, start belly-aching and boo-hooing persecution.

Are Christians being persecuted in America?

In a word: no.

What’s happening is that fundamentalists of Wildmon’s ilk constantly try to use the power of the government to promote their narrow faith or foist it onto others. When they are told to stop, they start screaming about persecution.

Exactly.

Let’s hope it’s a lasting decision, and let’s hope more judges decide to uphold the separation of church and state by doing away with license plates that promote God beliefs. God believers will still be able to display their Jesus fish and whatever they want to tacky up their cars with. They don’t need the state to display their beliefs on government license plates.

SC ordered to stop making religious license plates

COLUMBIA, S.C. – A federal judge says South Carolina must stop marketing and making license plates that feature the image of a cross and the words “I Believe.”

A federal judge issued a temporary injunction during a court hearing Thursday after opponents said the plates violate the separation of church and state.

U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie said the case needs to be heard in court. In the meantime, the judge said the Department of Motor Vehicles cannot take any more orders for the plates.

Department spokeswoman Beth Parks said the agency stopped taking orders more than a month ago, after it collected the 400 needed to cover the cost of making the plates. She said they are in production, and none has shipped.

The boo-hooing has already started. The general comments are much like this one:

Examiner Reader said:
I think Christians should be allowed to have a cross on their license plate if they wish. Freedom of expression etc., a few should not dictate to the many.

Christians, you can have your freedom of expression however you want, with your Jesus fish, your bumper stickers, t-shirts, church bells and steeples dotting the landscape, but you cannot imprint your beliefs on government property. Sorry.

“Hate is Hate, In America or India.”

So far so good. But after much blah blah blah he goes on to state.

And why? Well, if current theories and intel are correct, this slaughter was planned and executed by one of many Islamic groups that feel directed by their religion to subjugate – or exterminate – “infidels” like Hindus, Jews, Christians and even other Muslims who don’t hew to their extremist views. To them, there is only one acceptable worldview – a theology they intend to enforce on all humankind – and anyone who might disagree or obstruct their goals should be removed, violently if need be.

Thank God, it couldn’t happen here. Could it?

Look around. Watch your evening news. Read your newspaper.

Are you unaware of the raging demonstrations in our streets, in front of our churches and synagogues, even spilling into these places of worship, and many of these riots turning defamatory and violent? Have you not seen the angry distorted faces of the rioters, seen their derogatory and threatening placards and signs, heard their vows to overturn the democratically expressed views of voters, no matter what it costs, no matter what was expressed at the polls? Twice?

I refer to California’s Proposition 8. You haven’t heard about the well-oiled campaign to find out the names of every voter and business that contributed as much as $1,000, or even much less, in support of Prop 8? You haven’t heard about the announced plans to boycott, demonstrate, intimidate and threaten each one – because they dared to vote to retain marriage as between one man and one woman? You haven’t seen, on the evening news, prominent entertainers and even California Gov. Schwarzenegger, urging the demonstrators on, telling them they should “never give up” until they get their way?

PHEEEWWWW!!!!!!!! I have yet to see or hear any jump quite so large as this. Even Evil Kneivel would have a hard time making that jump, rocket enhanced.

I’ve checked and I have found ZERO hospiptalizations due to GAY riots. AAAHHHH so Pat please do tell how this is even close to

Islamic groups that feel directed by their religion to subjugate – or exterminate – “infidels” like Hindus, Jews, Christians and even other Muslims who don’t hew to their extremist views.

I’m ???
Bewildered???
Ohhh? but that’s not all is it Pat?

There never were any “rights” granted or designated to those who dissented with the will of the majority, other than the same rights all citizens have to work through the democratic process to accomplish their purposes. No “rights” were ever granted to citizens on the basis of their sexual habits or lifestyle. There simply are no such “rights.”

Ahh but here is where you are relly WRONG Pat. Rights are not granted that is why they are called RIGHTS. (You’re a wealthy man find out about that.)

The rights of LIFE, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of HAPPINESS
Isn’t that all that is being requested Pat?
The entire article can be found here

Man! I’m tired of this bullshit. SOOOOOOO!!!!

To wash this horseshit out of your mouth GIF’sers I give you this.
From the movie “DINGO”
The opening scene with Mile Davis Band. Rent the movie. It is a good flick. Great music and Miles’s only Movie appearance that I know of.
My mouse is not working properly.

First, Bill O’Reilly does a report against the atheist sign that is on display at the Capitol Building in Olympia, Washington. He has his panties all in a knot over this one and is bringing far more attention to this than if he had just left it alone. Thanks Bill!

Sometimes Christians are do more to help get the word out about atheism and reason than we could ever hope to do ourselves!

Then, O’Reilly debates Megyn Kelly over this atheist sign. He is using the example of what if there was a display of Dr. Martin Luther King and someone put a sign up that says “We hate blacks” next to it. I wish he had debated an atheist because he would have been told that Jesus is a MYTH, Dr. Martin Luther King was a real person who we have video tapes of and recordings. He was not said to be born of a virgin only to die on a cross and then come back to life and fly up into heaven where he lives forever and waits for believers to come kiss his feet for all eternity in another dimension. Dr. Martin Luther King is a very respected historical figure who should not even have been brought up as an example, and that is what Miss Megyn should have told him loud and clear. Of course, Bill would not invite someone on his show who would make him look like the asshat he is. Megyn, though she is a lawyer is stymied by her beliefs that Jesus is real.

Listen up, Bill, The real point is that religious displays should not be allowed on public and government property. Period.

Poll: Calif. gay marriage ban driven by religion

SAN FRANCISCO – Voters’ economic status and religious convictions played a greater role than race and age in determining whether they supported the Nov. 4 ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage in California, a new poll shows.

The ban drew its strongest support from both evangelical Christians and voters who didn’t attend college, according to results released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California.

It’s not just the evangelicals who played a role in this vote,

People who identified themselves as practicing Christians were highly likely to support the constitutional amendment, with 85 percent of evangelical Christians, 66 percent of Protestants and 60 percent of Roman Catholics favoring it.

Proving once again, with religion comes bigotry, divisiveness and oppression. How does legalizing gay marriage change the lives of any of these voters? Can any of them explain that without their buy-bull?

I read about this in Yahoo news this morning, then found links to the story being reported and commented on at other sites, including American’s United and Friendly Atheist.

Anti-Terror Law Requires that God be Acknowledged

Under state law, God is Kentucky’s first line of defense against terrorism. The 2006 law organizing the state Office of Homeland Security lists its initial duty as “stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth.”

Specifically, Homeland Security is ordered to publicize God’s benevolent protection in its reports, and it must post a plaque at the entrance to the state Emergency Operations Center with an 88-word statement that begins, “The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.”

State Rep. Tom Riner, a Southern Baptist minister, tucked the God provision into Homeland Security legislation as a floor amendment that lawmakers overwhelmingly approved two years ago.

While I can see that this can piss people off, and agree with the action of the lawsuit, I agree with Hemant Mehta that some of the accusations are going a bit too far.

The lawsuit that has been filed states:

Edwin Kagin, a Boone County lawyer and the national legal director of American Atheists, said he was appalled to read in the Herald-Leader last week that state law establishes praising God – and installing a plaque in God’s honor – as the first duty of the Homeland Security Office.

The state and federal constitutions both prohibit government from getting involved in religion, Kagin said Monday.

“This is one of the most outrageous things I’ve seen in 35 years of practicing law. It’s breathtakingly unconstitutional,” Kagin said.

But the reasoning some of us are having problems with and I find a wee bit embarrassing is as follows:

In the suit, American Atheists argues that Homeland Security should focus on public-safety threats rather than promote religion.

The suit notes that the federal and state homeland security agencies were created as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists, and it refers to those attacks as “a faith-based initiative.”

The plaintiffs ask for the homeland security law to be stripped of its references to God. They also ask for monetary damages, claiming to have suffered sleeping disorders and “mental pain and anguish.”

“Plaintiffs also suffer anxiety from the belief that the existence of these unconstitutional laws suggest that their very safety as residents of Kentucky may be in the hands of fanatics, traitors or fools,” according to the suit.

I agree with the Friendly Atheist that suffering sleeping disorders, and mental pain and anguish, anxiety are going overboard and kind of silly. As Hemant says,

It seems foolish to ask for monetary damages for something like that. Hell, we’ve had President Bush at the helm for the past eight years — that’s much more cause for sleeplessness and anguish than God.

What do you all think? Most of our leaders have always believed in this hocus pocus and no one has ever claimed before to be losing any sleep over it. Have you?

Okay, so back in April there was this story:

Leaders to adorn sackcloth and ashes to fight crime: At Tuesday’s Birmingham City Council meeting, Mayor Larry Langford proclaimed Friday, April 25, a “day of prayer in sackcloth and ashes” in Birmingham. [...] In the decree, Langford said that Birmingham’s crime problem “pails” (sic) in comparison to the biblical City of Nineveh. The proclamation tells the Bible story of Jonah and the city of Nineveh: “Whereas Chapter 3, verse 5 & 6, of the Book of Jonah, Old Testament states, that the people of Nineveh believe God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of them,” the resolution reads.

And it actually looks like it worked…

Alabama mayor arrested on corruption charges

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - Federal authorities arrested the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, on Monday in a corruption probe surrounding a sewer bond debt that could lead to the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Authorities arrested Mayor Larry Langford in Birmingham at 7 a.m. (1200 GMT) and charged him with 60 counts including bribery, money laundering, conspiracy and filing false tax returns, according to U.S. Attorney Alice Martin. Langford was charged along with investment banker William Blount and lobbyist Al LaPierre for a total of 101 counts. The government said it was also seeking $7.6 million in forfeiture from the three men. [...] Langford, a Democrat, was the head of the Jefferson County commission at the time it engaged in variable rate, auction and bond swaps to raise money to improve its sewer system. “He sold out his public office to his friends Blount and LaPierre for about $235,000 in expensive clothes, watches and cash to pay his growing personal debt. All the while, Blount was paid fees topping $7 million,” said Martin.

Oh, the irony! It’s a miracle!

LET SANTA LIGHT THE MENORAH

The president and the first lady invited leaders of America’s Jewish community for a Hanukkah reception at the White House next month - but raised more than a few eyebrows by putting a picture of a Christmas tree on the invitation. The message reads that the couple “requests the pleasure of your company at a Hanukkah reception,” written beneath an image of a Clydesdale horse hauling a Christmas fir along the snow-dappled drive to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Ah yes, another dumbass xian who has yet to read her bible…

Congregation, if you would be so kind as to please turn your bibles to Jeremiah 10:2-4:

Thus saith the LORD, learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

Truth be told, I’m actually thinking about putting this verse in every xmas card I send out, and putting this verse all around my house in the form of ornaments.

‘Tis the season — to be xian…

Praise Be! Glory!…